Dré Wapenaar in his speech at the International Design Conference, Aspen, Colorado, june 2001:

“For years I’ve been fighting against the idea of making tents for camp sites. But one of my latest projects, the TENTVILLAGES was designed and produced for some camp companies in Holland. It shows a good summary of the issues I find important in my work as well as the problems I have to deal with.

The way in which the individual modules are set together as a village, the arrangement of common and private spaces, the different levels and proximities of the tents, can be done in many different ways. It depends on the group of people that will live in it and the social implications it deals with.
All the tents together form an image like a miniature society.
Over and under, inside-outside, fullness and emptiness, material qualities, construction, moving around and through, being present in, the way light plays with the transparency of the canvas and moves over the surface of the material.

All these qualities, …together with…design, functionality and necessity, set up a situation of encountering.”